Kitabı oku: «Henry Is Twenty: A Further Episodic History of Henry Calverly, 3rd», sayfa 18

2

Henry turned away from Donovan’s soda fountain, wiping froth from his moustache, and sauntered to the nearer of the two doors. His brows were knit in a slight frown that suggested anxiety. There was earnestness, intensity, in the usually pleasant gray-blue eyes as he peered now up the street, now down.

A low-hung Victoria, drawn by a glossy team in harness that glittered with silver, swung at a dignified pace around the corner of Filbert Avenue, two wooden men in plum-coloured livery on the box, two dignified figures on the rear seat, one middle-aged, large, formidable, commanding, sitting erect and high, the other slighter and not commanding.

Instantly, at the sight, Henry’s frown gave place to a nervously eager smile, returned, went again. When the carriage at length drew up before Berger’s grocery, across the way, however, he had both frown and smile under reasonable control and was a presentable if deadly serious young man.

The footman leaped down and stood at attention. The formidable one stepped out and entered Berger’s. And the slight, fresh-faced girl, leaned out to welcome the youth who rushed across the street.

In Sunbury, in the nineties, a youth and a maiden could ‘go together’ without a thought of the future. The phrase implied frank pairing off, perhaps an occasionally shyly restrained sentimental passage, in general a monopoly of the other’s spare time. An ‘understanding,’ on the other hand, was a. distinctly transitive state, leading to engagement and marriage as soon as the youth was old enough or could earn a living or the opposition of parents could be overcome.

The relationship between Cicely and Henry had lately hovered delicately between the two states. If it seemed, after each timid advance, to recede from the ‘understanding’ point; that was because of the burdens and the heavy responsibility that instantly claimed their thoughts at the mere suggestion of engagement and marriage:

There were among the parents of Henry’s boyhood friends, couples that had married at twenty or even younger, and on no greater income than Henry’s rather doubtful twelve dollars a week. But that day had gone by. An ‘understanding’ meant now, at the very least, that you were saving for a diamond. You could hardly ask a nice girl to become engaged without one.

And marriage meant good clothes for parties, receptions and Sundays, and the street; it meant membership in the Country Club, a reasonably priced pew in church, a rented house, at least, preferably not in South Sunbury and distinctly not out on the prairie or too near the tracks, a certain amount invested in furniture, dishes and other house fittings, and reasonable credit with the grocer and at the meat-market. You could hardly ask a nice girl to go in for less than that. You really couldn’t afford to let her go in for less.

So they were marrying later now; six or eight or ten years later. And the girls were turning to older men. Here in Sunbury, Clemency Snow had married a man seven or eight years older whose younger brother had been among her playmates. Jane Bellman had married a shy little doctor of thirty-one or two. And Martha Caldwell, whom Henry had ‘gone with’ for two or three years, was permitting the rich, really old bachelor, James B. Merchant, Jr., to devote about all his time to her. He was thirty-eight if a day.

It was a disturbing condition for the town boys. Thoughts of it cast black shadows on Henry’s undisciplined brain as he looked at the girl in the Victoria, felt, in the very air about them, her quick, bright smile, the delicately responsive liftings of her eyebrows, her marked desirability.

‘Oh, Henry,’ she was saying, ‘I’ve just been hearing the most wonderful things about you! You can’t imagine! At Mrs MacLouden’s tea. There was a man there – ’

Henry sniffed. A man at a tea! And talking to Cicely! Making up to her, doubtless.

‘ – a friend of Mr Merchant’s, from New York. And what do you think? Mr Merchant showed him your stories. The ones that have come out. He’s been keeping them. Isn’t that remarkable? They read them aloud. And this man says that you are more promising than Richard Harding Davis was at your age. Henry – just think!’

But Henry was scowling. He was thinking with hot, growing concern, of the man. A rich old fellow, of course! One of the dangerous ones.

He leaned over the wheel.

‘Cicely – you – you’re expecting me to-night?’

‘Oh! Why yes, Henry, of course I’d like to have you come.’

‘But weren’t you expecting me?’

‘Why – yes, Henry.

‘Of course’ – stiffly – ‘if you’d rather I wouldn’t come…’

‘Please, Henry! You mustn’t. Not here on the street!’ He stood, flushing darkly, swallowing down the emotion that threatened to choke him.’

She murmured: —

‘You know I want you to come.’

This was unsatisfactory. Indeed he hardly heard it. He was full of his thoughts about her, about the older men, about those tremendous burdens that he couldn’t even pretend to assume. And then came a mad recklessness.

‘Oh, Cicely – this is awful – I just can’t stand it! Why can’t we have an understanding? Call it that? Stop all this uncertainty! I – I – I’ve just got to speak to your aunt – ’

‘Henry! Please! Don’t say those things – ’

‘That’s it! You won’t let me say them.’

‘Not here – ’

‘Oh, please, Cicely! Please! I know I’m not earning much; but I’ll be twenty-one on the seventh of November and then I’ll have more’n three thousand dollars. Please let me tell her that, Cicely. Oh, I know it wouldn’t do to spend all the principal, – but it would go a long way toward setting us up – you know – ’ his voice trembled, dropped even lower, as with awe – ‘get the things we’d need when we were – you know – well, married.’

He felt, as he poured out this mumbled torrent of words, that he was rushing to a painful failure. Cicely had drawn back. She looked bewildered, and tired. And he had fetched up in a black maze of despairing thoughts.

The footman must have heard part of it. He was standing very straight. And the coachman was staring out over the horses. He had probably heard too.

Then Madame Watt came sailing out Of Berger’s; fixed her hawk eyes on him with a curious interest.

He knew that he lifted his hat. He saw, or half saw, that Cicely tried to smile. She did bob her head in the bright quick way she had.

Then the Victoria rolled away, and he was standing, one foot in the street, the other on the kerb, gazing after them through a mist of something so near tears that he was reduced to a painful struggle to gain even the appearance of self-control.

And then, for a quarter-hour, mood followed mood so fast that they almost maddened him.

He thought of old Hump, up there in the office, fighting out their common battle. Perhaps he ought to go back; do his best to understand the accounts. Figures always depressed him. No matter. He would go back. He would show Hump that he could at least be a friend. Yes, he could at least show that. Thing to do was to keep thinking of the other fellow. Forget yourself. That was the thing!

But what he did, first, was to cross over to Swanson’s flower shop and sternly order violets. Paid cash for them.

‘Miss Cicely Hamlin?’ asked the Swanson-girl.

‘Yes,’ growled Henry, ‘for Miss Hamlin. Send them right over, please.’

Then he walked around the block; muttering aloud; starting; glancing-about; muttering again. He could hardly go to Cicely’s. Not this evening! Not when she had been willing to leave it like that.

He meant to go, of course. Too early. By seven-thirty or so. But he told himself he wouldn’t do it. She would have to write him. Or lose him. He would wait in dignified silence.

The early September twilight was settling down on Sunbury.

Lights came on, here and there. The dusk was a relief.

He had wrecked everything. It wasn’t so much that he had proposed an understanding. In the circumstances she couldn’t altogether object to that. It was risking the vital, final decision, of course. But that, sooner or later, would have to be risked. That was something a man had to face, and go through, and be a sport about. No, the trouble seemed to be that he had lost himself. He had made it awkward, impossible, for both of them. Through his impatience he had created an impossible situation. And in losing himself he had lost her, and lost her in the worst way imaginable. He had contrived to make an utterly ridiculous figure of himself, and, in a measure, of her. He had to set his teeth hard on that thought, and compress his lips.

He was on Simpson Street again. Yellow gas-light shone out of the windows of the Gleaner offices, over Hemple’s. Old Hump was hard at it.

He went up there.

3

Humphrey was sitting there, chin on chest, long legs stretched under the desk. He didn’t look up; only a slight start and a movement of one hand indicated that he heard.

Henry stood, confused, a thought alarmed, looking at him; moved aimlessly to his own desk and stirred papers about; came, finally, and sat on a corner of the exchange table, tapping his cane nervously against his knee.

‘Aren’t going to stay here all night, are you, Hump?’ he asked, rather huskily.

Humphrey’s hand moved again; he didn’t speak.

‘Hump! What’s the matter? Anything happened?’

Still no answer.

‘But you know we’re picking up in advertising, Hump?’

‘Not near enough.’ This was a non-committal growl.

‘And see the way our circulation’s been – ’

‘Losing money on it. Can’t carry it.’

‘But – but, Hump – ’

The senior partner waved his hand. His face was gray and grim, his voice restrained. He even smiled as he deliberately filled his pipe.

‘It’s bad, Hen. Very, very bad. I’ve tried to keep you from worrying, but you’ve got to know now. We paid a little over two thousand for this plant and the good will.

‘Cheap enough, wasn’t it?’ cried Henry.

‘If we’d really got her for that, yes. But look at the capital it takes. Building up. I had just a thousand more, a bond. Threw that in last month, you know.’

‘Oh’ – breathed Henry, fright in his eyes – ‘I forgot about that.’

‘And you can’t raise a cent.’

Henry tried to think this over. He started to speak; swallowed; slipped off the table; stood there; lifted his cane and sighted along it out the window.

‘I can – November seventh,’ he finally remarked.

Humphrey blew a smoke-ring; followed it with his eyes.

‘My boy, nations, worlds, constellations, may crash between now and November seventh.’

‘I – I could tackle my uncle again,’ murmured Henry, out of a despairing face.

There was at times an acid quality in Humphrey. Henry felt it in him now, as he said dryly: —

‘As I recall your last transaction with your uncle, Hen, he told you finally that you couldn’t have one cent of your principal before November seventh.’

‘He – well, yes, he did say that.’

‘Meant it, didn’t he?’

‘Y – yes. He meant it.’

‘He’s a business man, I believe.’ Humphrey smoked for a moment; then added, with that same biting quality in his voice, ‘And unless he’s insane he would hardly put money into this business now. As it stands – or doesn’t stand. And I presume he’s not insane. No, we’ll drop that subject.’

Henry felt Humphrey’s eyes on him. Sombre cold eyes. And he fell again, in his misery, to sighting along his cane. It seemed to Henry that the world was reeling to disaster. His young, over keen imagination was painting ugly, inescapable pictures of a savage world in which all effort seemed to fail.

Between Humphrey and himself a gulf had opened. It was growing wider every minute. Nothing he could say would help; words were no good. He was afraid he might try to talk. It would be like him; floods of talk, meaningless, mere words, really mere nerves. He clamped his lips on that fear.

If I understand Henry, the thing that had brought him to despair – and he was in despair – was neither the sorry condition of the business, nor the trouble with Cicely. These had confused and saddened him. But the hopelessness had come after he saw Humphrey’s face and eyes and caught that cool note in his voice. To the day of his death Henry couldn’t endure hostility in those close about him. He had to have friendly sympathy, an easy give and take of the spirit in which his naïveté would not be misunderstood. This sort of atmosphere provided, apparently, the only soil in which his faculties could take root and grow. Hostility in those he had been led to trust disarmed him, crushed him.

‘Hump,’ he ventured now, weakly, ‘I think – maybe – you’d better show me those figures. I – I’ll try to understand ‘em. I will.’

Humphrey gave a little snort; brushed the idea away with a sweep of a long hand.

‘No use!’ he said brusquely. He rolled down the desktop and locked it with a snap. ‘Getting stale myself. Sleep on it. Not a thing you can do, Hen!’ He knocked the ashes from his pipe, gloomily. Buttoned his vest. Suddenly he broke out with this: —

‘You’re a lucky brute, Hen!’

Henry started; glanced up; fumbled at his moustache. ‘You’re wondering why I said that. But, man, you’re a genius – Yes, you are! I have to plug for it. But you’ve got the flare. You know well enough what’s loaded all this circulation on us. Your stories! Not a thing else. You’ll do more of ‘em. You’ll be famous.’

‘Oh, no, Hump I You don’t know how I’ve – ’

‘Yes, you’ll be famous. I won’t. It’s a gift – fame, success. It’s a sort of edge God – or something – puts on a man. A cutting edge. You’ve simply got it. I simply haven’t.’

Henry pulled and pulled at his moustache.

‘And you’ve got a girl – a lovely girl. She’s mad about you – oh, yes she is! I know. I’ve seen her look at you.’

‘But, Hump, you don’t just know what – ’

‘She doesn’t have to hide her feelings. Not seriously, not with a lying smile. And you don’t have to hide yours. You haven’t got this furtive rope around your neck, strangling the breath of decent morality out of your soul. Thank God you don’t know what it means – that struggle. She’ll be announcing her engagement one of these days.

‘There’ll be presents and flowers. You’ll get stirred up and write something a thousand times better than you know how to write. Money will come – oh, yes it will! It’ll roll to you, Hen. For a time. Or at times. And you’ll marry – a nice clean wedding. God, just to think of it is like the May winds off the lake!’

He threw out his long arms. Henry thought, perversely enough, that he looked like Lincoln.

‘But the greatest thing of all is that you’re twenty. Think of it! Twenty!.. Hen, when I was twenty I put my life on a schedule for five years. They were up last month.

‘I was to be flying at twenty-four. Think of it – flying! Through the air, man! Like a gull! At twenty-five I was to be famous and rich. A conqueror! I slaved for that. Worked days and nights and Sundays for that. Sweated for the Old Man there on the Voice; put up with his stupid little insults.’

He sprang up; got into his coat; looked at his watch.

‘I’m late. Got to stop at the rooms too. Mildred’ll be wondering. You can stay here if you like.’

But Henry clung to him. Around the back street they went. And Humphrey talked on.

‘Well, I’m twenty-five! And where’ve I got? I love a woman. Hen, I hope you’ll never be torn as I’m torn now. You think you’ve been through things. Why, you’re an innocent babe. I’ve got a woman’s name – and that’s a woman’s life, Hen! – in my hands. It’s a muddle. Maybe there’s tragedy in it. May never work out. Sometimes I feel as if we were going straight over a precipice, she and I. It goes dark. It suffocates me… It’s costing me everything. It’ll take money – a lot of it – money I haven’t got. If the paper goes, my last hopes go with it. If we can’t turn that corner. Everything comes down bang. No use.’

Henry tried to say, ‘Oh, I guess we’ll turn our corner all right;’ but if the words passed his lips at all it was only as a whisper.

They were a hundred feet from the alley back of Parmenter’s. It was dark now, there in the shade of the double row of maples. Humphrey stopped short; pressed his hands to his eyes; then looked at Henry.

‘You coming to the rooms, too?’ he asked.

Henry nodded.

‘I don’t know’s I – I was forgetting, so many things – Oh well, come along. It hardly matters.’

At the alley entrance a man intercepted them; said, ‘This is Henry Calverly, ain’t it?’ Struck a match and read an extraordinary mumble of words. He struck other matches, and read hurriedly on. Then he moved apologetically away, leaving Henry backed limply against a board fence.

Humphrey stood waiting, a tall shadow of a man. To him Henry turned, feeling curiously weak in the legs and gone at the stomach.

‘What is it?’ he asked, weakly, meekly. ‘I couldn’t understand. Did he ar – arrest me or something?’

‘Charlie Waterhouse has sued you for libel. Ten thousand dollars. Come on. I can’t wait.’

‘But – but – but that’s foolish. He can’t – ’

‘That’s how it is.’ Humphrey was grim.

They walked in silence up the alley. Henry stood by while his partner unlocked the neat front door to the old barn, a white door, with one white step and an iron scraper. He could just make them out in the dusk. He wondered if he mightn’t presently wake up and find it a dream… Old Hump!

They stood in the shop. Humphrey had switched on one light; he looked now, his face deeply seamed, his eyes a little sunken, at the dim shadowy metal lathes, the huge reels of copper wire, the tool benches, the rows of wall boxes filled with machine parts, the small electric motors hanging by twisted strings or wires from the ceiling joists, the heavy steel wheels in frames, the great box kites and the spruce and silk planes, in sections, the gas engine, the water motor, the wheels, shafts, and belting overhead.

He bent his sombre eyes on Henry.

That youth, aching at heart, bruised of spirit, unaware of the figure he made, was too far gone to be further puzzled by the weary, mocking smile that flitted across Humphrey’s face.

‘Hump!’ he cried out: ‘What’ll we do!’

‘Do? Sleep over it. Raise some more money?’

‘But how?’

Humphrey waved a hand at the machinery. ‘All this. And my library upstairs. They’ve stood me more’n four thousand, altogether. Ought to fetch something.’

‘But – but – ten thousand!’ Henry whispered the amount with awe as well as misery.

‘Oh, that! Your trouble! Why, you’ll sleep over that, too, and to-morrow I suppose you’ll talk to Harry Davis’s father.’ The senior Davis, Arthur P., was a Simpson Street lawyer. ‘They’ll sting you. But they don’t expect any ten thousand.’

‘But what I said is true! Charlie Waterhouse is a – ’

‘What’s that got to do with it. You can’t prove it. And we aren’t strong enough to hire counsel and detectives and run him to earth. Doesn’t look as if we had the barest breath of life in us. Charlie’ll think of your uncle next, and attach your mother’s estate.’

He said this with unusual roughness. Then he went upstairs; stamped around for a brief time; came hurrying down.

Henry, now, was sitting dejectedly on a work-bench.

‘Hump – please! – you don’t know how I feel. I – ’

‘And,’ replied the senior partner, ‘I don’t care. I don’t care how I feel, either. We either save the paper this week or we don’t. That’s what I care about right now.’

‘I – I won’t let you sell your things, Hump.’ An unconvincing assertion, from the limp figure on the bench.

‘You?’ Humphrey stared at him with something near contempt – stared at the moustache and the cane. ‘You? You won’t let me?.. For God’s sake, shut up!’

With which he went out, slamming the door.

For a time Henry continued to sit there. Then he dragged himself upstairs, went to his bookcase and got the book entitled Will Power and Self Mastery.

He turned the pages until he hit upon these paragraphs: – ‘Every machine, every cathedral, every great ship was a thought before it could become a fact. Build in your brain.

‘Through the all-enveloping ether drifts the invisible electricity that is all life, all energy. Open yourself to it. Make yourself a conductor. Stupidity and fear are resistants; cast these out. Make your brain a dynamo and drive the world.’

This seemed a good idea.

4

Arthur P. Davis was just rising from the supper table when the door-bell rang. He answered it himself; found young Calverly there, in a state of haggard but vigorous youthful intensity. He contrived, after a slight initial difficulty, to draw out of the curiously verbose youth the essential facts. He considered the matter with a deliberation and caution that appeared irritating to the boy. But he had read and (in the bosom of his family) chuckled over Sinbad the Treasurer. He had wondered a little, though he didn’t mention the fact to Henry, whether Charlie wouldn’t sue. Charlie had a case.

When Henry left, clearly still in a confused condition, it was Mr Davis’s impression that Henry had placed the matter in his hands as counsel and further had distinctly agreed to shut his head.

Henry apparently understood it differently. Or, more likely, he didn’t understand at all. Henry was, at the moment, a storm centre with considerable emotional disturbance still to come. Any one who has followed Henry, who knows him at all, will understand that such disturbance within him led directly and always to action. Whatever he may have said to Mr Davis, he was helpless. He had to function in his own way. Probably Mr Davis’s use in the situation was to stimulate Henry’s already overactive brain. Hardly more.

Certainly it was hardly later than a quarter or twenty minutes past seven when Henry appeared at Charlie Waterhouse’s place on Douglass Street.

The town treasurer was on the lawn, shifting his sprinkler by the light of the arc lamp on the corner and smoking his after-supper cigar.

The conversation took place across the picket fence, one of the few surviving in Sunbury at this time.

Henry said, fiercely: —

‘I want to talk to you about that libel suit.’

‘Can’t talk to me, Henry. You’ll have to see my lawyer.’

‘Yay-ah, I know. I’ve got a lawyer too.’

‘All right. Let ‘em talk to each other.’

‘You know you can’t get any ten thousand dollars.’

‘Can’t talk about that.’

‘Yes, you can. You gotta.’

‘Oh, I’ve gotta, have I?’

‘Yes, you bet you have. Some people seem to think you’ve got a case.’

‘Guess there ain’t much doubt about that.’

‘Mebbe there ain’t. Even if what I said was true.’

‘Look here, Henry, I don’t care to have this kind o’ talk going on around here. You better go along.’

‘Go along nothing! I’ll say every word of it. And what’s more, you’ll listen. No, don’t you go. You stand right there.’

Charlie, a stoutish man in an alpaca coat, with a florid countenance and a huge moustache, gave a moment’s consideration to the blazing young crusader before him. The boy wasn’t going to be any too easy to handle. He had no need to see him clearly to become aware of that fact. Charlie shifted his cigar.

‘Lemme put it this way. S’pose you could sting me. You’d never get ten thousand. But s’pose, after I get through talking, you decide to go ahead and push the case – ’

‘Push the case? Well, rather!’

‘Wait a minute! All right, let’s say you’re going ahead and fight for part o’ that ten thousand. What you think you could get. Then what’m I going to do?’

‘Do you suppose I care what – ’

‘Oh, yes you do! Now listen! I want you to get this straight. You – ’

‘You want me to – ’

‘Keep still! Now here’s – ’

‘Look here, I won’t have you – ’

‘Yes, you will! Listen. If you fight, I’ll fight. I’ll go straight after you. I’ll run you to earth. I’ll hire detectives to shadow you. I know you ain’t straight, and I’ll show you up before the whole dam town. I’m right and I tell you right here I’m going to prove it! I’ll put you in prison! I’ll – ’

During most of this speech Charlie was talking too. But in so low a tone that he could hardly miss what Henry was saving. He broke in now with a loud: —

‘Shut up!’

Henry stopped really because he was out of breath. It gratified him to see that neighbours were appearing in their lighted windows. And a youthful chorus on a porch across the way was suddenly hushed.

‘Came here to make a scene, did you? Well, I’ll – ’

‘No, I didn’t come here to make a scene. I came here to make you listen to reason and I’m going to do it.’

‘Well, drop your voice a little, can’t you! No sense in yelling our private affairs.’

‘Sure I’ll drop my voice. You’re the one that started the yelling.’

‘Well, I don’t say you couldn’t make it hard for any man in my position if you want to be nasty – fight that way.’

‘You wait!’

‘But what I’d like to know is – what I’d like to know… Where you goin’ to get the money to hire all those detectives?’

‘Where’m I going to get the money to pay you if you win the suit?’

Though Charlie came back with, ‘Oh, I’ll win the suit all right, all right!’ this was clearly a facer. He added, pondering, ‘I guess Munson’ll manage to attach anything you’ve got.’ But he was at sea. ‘Fine dirty idea o’ yours, hounding a decent man, with detectives.’ And finally, ‘Well, what do you want?’

‘Listen! S’pose you did win. You’d never get ten thousand.’

‘I’d get five.’

‘No, you wouldn’t. Why don’t you act sensible and tell me what you’ll take to stop it.’

‘I’d have to think that over.’

‘You tell me now or I’ll bust this town open.’

‘No good talking that way, Henry. Can you get any money?’

‘Tell you for sure in twenty-four hours.’

‘But it ain’t the money. You’ve assailed my character. That’s what you’ve done. Will you retract in print?’

‘No, I won’t. But if you’ll come down to a decent price and promise to call off the boycott – ’

‘What boycott?’

‘Advertising. You know. You do that, and I’ll agree to leave you alone. Somebody else’ll have to find you out, that’s all. I’ve gotta help Hump Weaver pull the Gleaner out. I guess that’s my job now.’

He said this last sadly. He had read stories of wonderful young St Georges who slew a dozen political dragons at a time. Who never compromised or gave hostages to fortune. But there was only one chance for the paper and for old Hump. That chance was here and now.

He was sorry he couldn’t see Charlie Waterhouse’s face. ‘What’ll you give?’ asked that worthy, after thoughtfully chewing, his cigar.

‘A thousand.’

‘Lord, no. Four thousand.’

‘That’s impossible.’

‘Three, then.’

‘No, I won’t pay anything like three.’

‘I wouldn’t go a cent under two.’

‘Well – two thousand then. All right. I’ll let you know by to-morrow night.’

‘You understand, Henry, it ain’t the money. It’s for the good o’ the town I’m doing it. To keep peace, y’ understand. That’s why I’m doing it. Y’ understand that, Henry.’ He actually reached over the fence and hung to the boy’s arm.

‘We’d better shake hands on it,’ said Henry.

‘Sure! I’ll stand by it, if you will.’

‘I will. Good-bye, now.’

And Henry, somewhat confused regarding his ethical position, depressed at the thought that you couldn’t rise altogether out of this hard world, that you had to live right in it, compromise with it, let yourself be soiled by it – Henry, his eyes down to beads, flushed about the temples, caught the eight-six to Chicago.

He rode out to the West Side on a cable-car. It is an interesting item to note in the rather zig-zag development of Henry’s highly emotional nature that he never once weakened during that long ride. He was burning up, of course. It was like that wonderful week when he had written day and night, night and day, the Simpson Street stories. But it was, in a way, glorious. That ethereal electricity was flowing right through him. The Power was on him. He knew, not in his surface mind but in the deeper seat of all belief, in his feelings, that he couldn’t be stopped or headed. Not to-night.